


Tales From The Upside Down

by VerityR



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, check chapter notes for specific tags/warnings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 21:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17373620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerityR/pseuds/VerityR
Summary: A place to throw all of the short fics I post on my tumblr!





	1. Things You Said Through Your Teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pre-series Joyce/Hopper. Teen.

“I can’t go to prom with you if you don’t ask, you know.”

Jim grimaced, pulling on a cigarette that was still stained with her lipstick.

“You don’t care about that shit.”

Joyce raised a freshly plucked eyebrow.  “I don’t?”

The skin on her brow bone was still pink and puckered from her primping, which was ridiculous, because this wasn’t a date. It was hanging out in the bed of Hop’s dad truck, light pollution making the stars look foggy and as far off as everything else exciting.

“Nah.” Hop tried and failed to blow a smoke ring.

“Impressive,” she smirked.

“Shuddup.” Jim grumbled, still smiling. He tilted his broad shoulders toward her by a few imperceptible degrees, inadvertently making Joyce think of the protractor in her room and the unfinished math homework it was sitting on top of. “Just said you shouldn’t take the first offer you get.”

“And it has nothing to do with the fact that Lonnie Byers is the one who asked me?”

He scoffed. “Fuck do I care about that?”

Joyce tried to clench her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. She really was cold, but she would die if Hop thought she was one of those girls faking cold so they could wear their boyfriend’s letterman jacket.

Not that Hop was her boyfriend. Besides, he didn’t even  _have_  a letterman jacket.

“Sort of seemed like you cared.” Joyce injected her voice with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Seeing as you dumped your tray and high-tailed it out of the caf after he asked me.”

It almost seemed like Jim’s face was red. But that must’ve been the cold. God knew her nose must be red. Joyce wrapped her lumpy handmade scarf in front of her face self-consciously.

“You know, some girls would get ideas— ” Her teeth started chattering too loudly to speak.

“Cold?”

Joyce ignored him. “Getting calls from a guy at some ungodly hour— ”

“C’mon, eight o’clock is not an ungodly hour— ”

“Begging for her help with some, I quote, ‘top secret project’.”

Hop grinned, infuriatingly. “I did need your help.”

“You couldn’t tell me you want help picking up this thing over the phone?” Incredulous, Joyce gestured to the wooden coffee table her neighbors down the street had left on the curb. The two of them were sitting nuzzled beside it in the truck bed, a set-up that didn’t give them much personal space. (Which she kind of assumed was the point.)

“You have a big mouth,” he maintained, shrugging. “And I didn’t want to give this baby up.”

“Please. Who was I going to tell?”

“As if you don’t know!”

“Oh?”

Jim puffed out his chest, looking a little ridiculous. “That brother of yours is my number one competitor.”

“In what,” Joyce said, wryly, “dumpster diving?”

“I prefer to think of it as scavenging. A noble pass time that connects us with primitive man.”

“I think you’re already pretty connected to your inner primitive man, Hop.”

He stuck out his tongue, then startled her by getting up suddenly and rooting around the backseat.

“Besides,” came his voice, slightly muffled. “Don’t know where you get off, acting so high and mighty. Where do you think your vanity came from?”

“Evan gave it to me for— oh my god.” She screwed her eyes shut. “The  _trash_?”

“Hey, not our fault rich people keep throwing away perfectly good stuff.” Hop sat back down next to her, a little closer this time. “Here.”

He thrust a Thermos emblazoned with cartoon cowboys into her hands.

Joyce looked at him skeptically as she uncapped it. “There’s nothing… else in here, is there?”

“No, Joyce,” Jim sighed, like a child reporting to an especially strict teacher. “I don’t waste my alcohol on goody-two shoes.”

“Only your coffee,” she muttered, sourly, before taking a sip. Immediately, Joyce had to blink back surprise. “You take it the same way I do. Black with sugar.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t drink that crap at all. I’m not, like, forty. Just didn’t want you to bitch about being cold.”

_And you just happened to remember how I take my coffee?_

But she didn’t say that.

“Don’t make fun of me,” Joyce managed after a moment, with an exaggerated pout. “I’m petite! I have less body heat!”

“Less fat to keep you insulated, you mean.”

She flushed, not knowing exactly why. “I didn’t— I mean, you’re not fat.”

“Well, my mom claims this baby fat will drop off me any day now.” Hop winked.

It was true that he still had the round features she remembered from grammar school speech class (Jim lisped, she pronounced r’s as w’s) but the baby fat was long since gone. He’d shot up about a foot in a year, and now he was was muscled and broad and big. Joyce had only recently come to appreciate what a change there had been.

After all, this was the first semester they’d had a class together since middle school. And while they’d always shared a speech class bond, they had never exactly been friends. Their relationship was mostly transactional; he’d copy her homework, she’d smoke his cigarettes.

And now it looked like Hop was interested in a different kind of transaction.

Joyce was overcome with a sudden, truly insane fear that he was reading her mind, and forced herself to switch tracks.

“So, uh, what band is this?” It came out as a squeak, and she barely resisted the urge to slam her head into the stupid, stupid table that was someone else’s garbage.

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

Hop looked at her like she was slow. “Yes. The band?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Joyce swallowed. “It’s cool. Real, you know, uh… groovy.”

Personally she didn’t really go for the kind of stuff that put more effort into the music than the lyrics. But most guys didn’t really want to hear your opinion about music. Especially when they had you alone in their car at night.

“You’re full of shit,” he said, but he was smiling. “Give ’em a chance, that’s all I ask. Next time we’ll listen to Bobby Darin, all right?”

All she could hear was next time next time next time next time.

Joyce managed an eyeroll and a scoff at the insult to her taste, but couldn’t find the words to rise to his bait and defend herself. Jim nudged her with a shoulder, teasingly. Even after he pulled away, she felt his touch burning through the layers of her coat and her sweater and her skin, setting fire to the blood underneath.

She couldn’t speak, and Jim didn’t seem to feel the need to, so they fell into another silence, this time scored by a seemingly unending guitar solo.

“You never answered my question.”

There was only one question Joyce cared about, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t the one on Hop’s mind.

“Yes, Hop, I am kind of cold,” she sighed, pulling her legs to her chest.

“Aw, don’t,” Jim drawled, with lascivious emphasis. “You’ll ruin the view.”

Joyce smacked his arm. “Don’t be gross.”

His eyes widened, and Joyce was pierced with a strange sense of awareness. In that moment, she could tell Hop was just as nervous as she was, uncomfortably acting out a role he’d pieced together from books and movies. And Joyce could tell he wouldn’t make another move. Not unless she did something.

“Well.” She gnawed on her lip, not sparing a thought for the lipstick she was smearing on her teeth. “Maybe a little gross is okay.”

Hop smiled. Not one of those annoying teenaged boy smirks, like he’d caught a peak of her bra strap or something. He just looked happy.

Joyce opened her mouth to speak again, but was stopped short by his lips— hot and dry, not entirely pleasant.

Hop pulled away and licked his lips, the muscles in his (miraculous, godly, otherwordly…) jaw tensing, like rubber band ready to snap.

She cupped the back of his neck, pulling all six-feet-three-inches of him back to her.

“Like this,” she cooed, before slipping her tongue into his mouth.

“Joyce…” He said this into her mouth.

She sucked his lower lip into her mouth.

“Joyce.”

She wriggled her way onto his lap, unoccupied hand now resting against his chest.

“Joyce.”

“What?” Joyce broke away, all doe-eyes.

“I’m trying to ask you— ah, Jesus Christ.” Jim buried his shaggy head in her shoulder.

“Ask me whaaaat?” Joyce dragged out the question in a sing-song, drumming her fingers against his sternum, where she could feel the frenetic jump of his pulse.

He planted gentle kisses on her collar, on her neck. Careful not to give her a hickey, which was nice change of pace from the usual possessive Neanderthals of Hawkins, though Joyce thought she really ought to tell him that she wouldn’t exactly mind…

“Fucking… ugh, damn it all to— ” Hop grit his teeth. “Wanna go to prom with me?”

“Eh, you know me.” Joyce tossed her hair. “I don’t really care about that kind of stuff.”

He groaned, burying his face in her neck. But Joyce could tell he was smiling.


	2. Things You Said Under The Stars And In The Grass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pre-series Jonathan/Nancy. Gen.

“I can’t see shit,” Dustin whined, dragging Nancy into consciousness.

“Because you’re not looking through the microscope.” This, from Lucas.

At least, she thought it was Lucas. Her brain was still fuzzy and relaxed. Maybe this was just another dream.

“Because someone is hogging it.” A fake cough. “Mike.”

Nancy screwed up her face in concentration. In her dreams, she could always fly.

“You can look when I’m done!”

She flipped over a palm and wiggled her fingers, only to be met by dampish dirt and springy grass.

“By then the shower will be over!”

Nancy sighed. Not a dream, then.

“Guess you should’ve asked your parents for a telescope instead of a stupid turtle, then.”

There was silence for a second, then the unmistakable sound of two unathletic ten-year-olds wrestling.

“Guys!” Lucas was shouting. “Could you stop being idiots for, like, a second?”

Nancy sighed again (not that the boys paid any mind) and stretched out in the grass. Time to surrender to consciousness.  She sat up, lifting the plastic-jacketed library copy of  _Ethan Frome_  that she’d fallen asleep to from her face.

From the way Mike and Dustin were pummeling each other into the mud, it seemed that they could not, in fact, stop being idiots for a second.

“Guys, quit it.” Lucas, again.

Maybe Lucas could reason with them. Nancy fell back on her elbows… shut her eyes… sank into the plush, warm grass…

“MotherFUCKER!”

But then again, maybe not.

“What is wrong with you!? Hair pulling is such a—  _oof_  —pussy move!”

“Takes one to—  _Lucas_!”

Her eyes flew open. Lucas, apparently having seen his opening, had darted to the unoccupied telescope and was about three seconds away from being body slammed by his two best friends.

“Enough!”

All three boys turned and looked at her. Dustin and Lucas, at least, had decency to look guilty.

“You’re going to let your friends have a turn and you’re all going to stop hitting each other.”

Mike puffed out his chest. “Or what?”

Nancy narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want to find out.”

“It’s not your telescope,” he sneered.

“Yeah, but she likes us better than you.” Dustin grinned. Still a jarring sight, now that he had front teeth. “Right, Nance?”

Nancy ignored him, instead addressing her brother. “And yet.”

“Yet what?”

“I’m in charge.”

“Because…?”

“Because I’m bigger than you, that’s why.” She poked his skinny ribcage with a freshly manicured nail. “Also because Mom said so before she left. I swear to god, you need to get your hearing checked.”

“You need to get your head checked,” Mike retorted, his freckles standing out angrily on his sunburnt face.

“You need to get— ”

“Will!”

Nancy whipped her head around, and there Will was, dutifully shepherded by his older brother, Jonathan.

Jonathan said nothing, which shouldn’t really have been noteworthy because that was kind of his thing, but it disarmed her all the same.

Forgetting her show of authority entirely, the boys quickly agreed amongst themselves that Will should have the next turn. Whatever. At least they weren’t maiming each other anymore.

“Getting a head start on the summer reading?”

Nancy was a little startled by Jonathan’s voice, she was so unused to hearing it: soft, with a lilting quality, like he was enjoying some private joke.

“Yeah, um.” She could feel herself getting red, being caught doing something as dorky as starting homework the first weekend of the summer. “It’s super boring, though. It’s going to take me forever.”

Jonathan glanced at the slim novel. “I kind of doubt that. You’re, like, the smartest girl in our grade.”

Nancy frowned. It didn’t seem like he was making fun of her, and there was no homework for him to copy off of her.

“What?” Jonathan asked, looking nervous.

“I don’t get you,” Nancy proclaimed, laying back on the grass.

To her surprise, he laughed, and lie down beside her.

“The only one I know is Orion,” Jonathan admitted, after a minute. “And I can’t see that one tonight.”

“That’s because some constellations are seasonal,” Nancy said, for once not afraid of coming across as a know-it-all, “You can only see that one in the winter. But there’s Ursa Major.”

“The Big Dipper, right?”

“Well, it’s part of it. The dipper part is the tail of the bear, see?”

He turned his head, long hair brushing against her neck. “Doesn’t look like a bear to me.”

Nancy rolled her eyes, not that he could see. “Well, none of them really look like much at all. Different cultures have completely different constellations.”

“So they look up at the stars and see completely different things.”

“Right,” Nancy said, with appreciation.

“Reminds me of how people always see human faces in random stuff, like sinks or whatever.”

“Because our brains are wired to seek patterns.”

“Makes me wonder if dogs have their own dog constellations.”

Nancy snorted. “What, like fire hydrants and milkbones?”

Jonathan sat up on his elbows, looking at her seriously. “And mailmen.”

Nancy burst out laughing, ridiculously, literally clutching her sides.

“It wasn’t that funny.”

Still laughing, she couldn’t respond, something about the situation itself suddenly seeming so strange.

“Nancy, I… ”

“You’re still here!?” Dustin exclaimed, stating the obvious as he hopped onto Jonathan’s back. “Did you bring the tent?”

“Yup.”

“You’re gonna help us set it up, right?” Lucas asked, tugging at his sleeves.

Jonathan shot a helpless look at Nancy. She shrugged sourly.

“Wait, wait, he has to look at the army we set up!” Mike barreled into his sister, kicking her book aside.

“There’s a whole calvary and cannons, and, and— ”

“Okay, okay, guys.” Jonathan interrupted, ruffling Will’s hair as he tried to catch his breath. “You can show me.”

The boys pulled him up, high-pitched voices overlapping once again.

“Coming?”

Nancy blinked back her surprise.

“Nancy doesn’t care about that kind of stuff,” Mike said, with a long-suffering sigh.

“You sure?”

Impatient, the boys had run ahead, back door slamming as they went inside.

“Yeah.” Nancy managed a smile, getting up and wiping at grass stains in vain. “Barb’s supposed to call me soon, anyway.”

“Okay.” Jonathan shoved his hands in his pockets, and seemed unsure of how to meet her eyes. “It was, uh… ”

“It was nice,” Nancy said, surprising herself by meaning it.

“Good luck with  _Ethan Frome_.”

Nancy opened her mouth to say something clever, some good parting line like a girl in a movie would have. But nothing came out. Jonathan was already inside.

She walked over to the abandoned telescope at stared at Ursa Major until the constellation looked like nothing at all.


	3. Things You Said At One AM

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post season 3 Jonathan/Nancy. Teen.

“You sure your mom won’t care?”

Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “Why would she?”

“Will can’t cross the street without a chaperone, but you can— ”

“Spend the night at my girlfriend’s house?”

Nancy blushed at the word, which was fairly ridiculous, as the boy who said it was currently naked and wrapped in her blue-and-pink quilt.

“Well… yeah.”

Jonathan rolled on his side, his dark eyes wide and serious.

“There’s a big difference between me and my brother.”

Nancy held back a snort, murmuring mostly into his chest. “You don’t say.”

Jonathan flicked her ear, making her giggle. “Don’t be weird.” His touch lingered, light as a butterfly on a leaf, tracing the shell of her ear, her neck. She shivered.

“Cold?”

“Mm-mm.”

He pulled the quilt around her bare shoulder anyway.

“We can put clothes on now, you realize.”

“Had enough of all of this?” Nancy jutted her chin, aiming for suggestive, but actually just jabbing her boyfriend in the shoulder blade.

Jonathan winced. “With a come on like that, how could I refuse?”

“Don’t make fun of me.” She rubbed her jaw. “I’m fragile.”

Jonathan placed a kiss on her temple.

“You should put on clothes if you’re cold. It’s January.”

“No, is it?” Nancy sat up, bringing her hand to her sternum in mock-surprise. “Excuse me, I have to go flip over my calendar.”

With one hand, Jonathan grabbed her waist, pulling her atop of him.

“Mm-mm.”

“You know,” Nancy grinned, sitting up on his lap. “If you want me to put on clothes, I’m going to have to get out of bed.”

Jonathan groaned.

“Hoisted by your own petard, eh?”

“Nnn. Something like that.” Jonathan began running his hands over her hips, up her waist and down again.

Nancy’s head tilted back slightly. She bit her lip, shifting slightly. “None of that, now.”

“Why not?”

“It’s one am! On a school night.”

“Oh, that.”

Nancy tutted, shimmying off of him and lying down, facing the wall. “Don’t make me revoke your sleepover rights.”

“You’re the one who forbade clothes in this bed,” Jonathan pointed out, idly playing with her hair.

“Mmm.” Nancy melted under his touch, relaxing muscles she hadn’t known were tense. “Doesn’t mean we’re gonna do anything,” —she yawned— “but sleep.”

“Why not put a shirt then?” Jonathan nuzzled her shoulder. “Miss ‘I’m-So-Fragile’.”

Nancy squirmed, flushing slightly. “It’s weird.”

“Yeah?” Lightly, he bit the soft place between her neck and her shoulder. “Thought we’d established that we like weird.”

She muttered something.

“Hm?”

“I said,” Nancy rolled over, looking up at him. “I like being close to you is all. As close as possible.”

Jonathan looked thoughtful.

“Oh yeah, that’s totally weird.” He continued, deadpan. “Wow, this must be pretty embarrassing for you.”

“I hate you,” Nancy said, biting back a smile despite herself. “I honestly, really do.”

“Uh huh.” Jonathan pulled the quilt under her chin. “Go to sleep, weirdo. It’s one am.”


End file.
